1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus capable of performing a recording operation on each of a first recording medium that is flexible, e.g., plain paper and a second recording medium that is rigid, e.g., a CD-R using a holding tray, the recording apparatus conceptually including a multifunction device typically including a printer, a facsimile machine, and a copier.
2. Related Art
An ink jet printer will be described below as an example of the recording apparatus. Some ink jet printers are capable of selectively performing a recording operation on a non-self-supporting flexible recording medium, such as a sheet of paper or a film, or a self-supporting rigid recording medium typified by an optical disk, such as a CD-R or a DVD-R. To perform the recording operation on a rigid recording medium, e.g., a CD-R, a dedicated holding tray is used. The holding tray is separately provided as an accessory for the printer. Alternatively, the holding tray is incorporated in a printer body of the printer, as disclosed in JP-A-2005-59584. The holding tray has a recess in which a recording medium, such as a CD-R, is received.
Transport of the two kinds of recording media to a recording zone and ejection of the two kinds of recording media to the outside of the printer are performed by a single transport roller mechanism and a single ejection roller mechanism, respectively. The transport roller mechanism includes a transport driving roller and a transport driven roller which are paired. The ejection roller mechanism includes an ejection driving roller and an ejection driven roller which are paired. To handle a rigid recording medium to be subjected to recording using the dedicated holding tray, the transport driving roller and the ejection driving roller are installed at the same level so that the recording medium located in the recording zone is parallel to an ink discharge surface of a recording head.
On the other hand, during transport of a flexible recording medium, it is preferred that the recording medium be pressed against a platen to stabilize the gap between the recording medium and the ink discharge surface of the recording head, since the recording medium is prevented from coming into contact with the recording head to increase recording quality. In this case, it is effective when a level (hereinafter, “installation level”) at which the ejection driving roller is installed is higher than that at which the transport driving roller is installed.
In the case where the installation level of the ejection driving roller is higher than that of the transport driving roller, when a rigid recording medium is transported using the holding tray, the holding tray and the recording medium are tilted. Disadvantageously, the parallelism of the recording medium relative to the ink discharge surface of the recording head is reduced. Accordingly, when a recording operation is performed on the rigid recording medium, the gap between the ink discharge surface of the recording head and the recording surface of the recording medium is unstable, leading to degraded recording quality.